News from the Lone Star State
Moderator: S2k Moderators
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Garland officer presence on LBJ remains thin
By BRAD WATSON / WFAA ABC 8
GARLAND, Texas - Ever since a Garland officer was killed by a motorist, the section of LBJ Freeway that runs through Garland hasn't seen much of a police concentration. The speed limit is 60-mph, but many people who drive on the freeway know that there are those who don't acknowledge the limit.
"Everybody drives maybe 70, 75," said one driver.
Police don't regularly go after speeders because of the 1998 accident. Ronnie Lerma, a police motorcycle officer, died when a motorist hit and killed him after he pulled over a driver for speeding on the freeway.
After that, some officers felt going after speeders was just too risky.
"Once we got to looking at it, and officers started telling us how many near misses they had been through, the chief at that time just didn't think it was worth it," said Garland Officer Joe Harn.
Garland stopped applying for the federal grant that paid for concentrated speed enforcement on LBJ, although neighbors Dallas and Mesquite still did.
Tex-DOT does not have current figures on LBJ speeds through Garland. However, a radar gun picked out several vehicles over a few minutes well above 70-mph.
Police said patrol officers sometimes look for LBJ speeders between calls, but there is usually not more of a pursuit that that.
"In so far as putting our guys out on motorcycles from the traffic unit, I don't think the chief has seen any different than that," Harn said.
By BRAD WATSON / WFAA ABC 8
GARLAND, Texas - Ever since a Garland officer was killed by a motorist, the section of LBJ Freeway that runs through Garland hasn't seen much of a police concentration. The speed limit is 60-mph, but many people who drive on the freeway know that there are those who don't acknowledge the limit.
"Everybody drives maybe 70, 75," said one driver.
Police don't regularly go after speeders because of the 1998 accident. Ronnie Lerma, a police motorcycle officer, died when a motorist hit and killed him after he pulled over a driver for speeding on the freeway.
After that, some officers felt going after speeders was just too risky.
"Once we got to looking at it, and officers started telling us how many near misses they had been through, the chief at that time just didn't think it was worth it," said Garland Officer Joe Harn.
Garland stopped applying for the federal grant that paid for concentrated speed enforcement on LBJ, although neighbors Dallas and Mesquite still did.
Tex-DOT does not have current figures on LBJ speeds through Garland. However, a radar gun picked out several vehicles over a few minutes well above 70-mph.
Police said patrol officers sometimes look for LBJ speeders between calls, but there is usually not more of a pursuit that that.
"In so far as putting our guys out on motorcycles from the traffic unit, I don't think the chief has seen any different than that," Harn said.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
AMBER ALERT: Baby among six abducted from home
From KHOU-TV Staff and Wire Reports
HOUSTON, Texas - Four armed men kicked in the front door of a west Harris County house and kidnapped six illegal immigrants at gunpoint, including a 6-month-old baby, authorities said.
One woman was later freed, but Harris County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. James Parker said the search continued Monday for the other five victims.
Parker described the missing as the 6-month-old with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a white jumper; Her mother and father, who are between 30 and 40 years old; and another couple in their 40s. All are Hispanic.
The woman who was released is giving investigators more details about the crime which began as a home invasion in the 4800 block of Gretna Green.
The owner of the house, who was related to the infant’s parents and another couple who were staying with him, returned from the grocery store Sunday night to find the front door kicked in, Parker said.
The five adults and baby were forced into their van which then sped away.
A neighbor said she saw two of the suspects inside their vehicle as it screeched down the street.
"It's a custom van and you could see the driver and you could see the passenger, but all the other windows were covered up," said Trelis Lee. "... I mean it gives me goosebumps just to talk about it now, 'cause I said now it alerts me that something suspicious was going on if all the windows were covered up in the van."
Lee said it was a white van, possibly a Ford, with a large gold stripe and a smaller blue or black stripe down the side. It had paper license tags.
The only obvious sign of the crime by Monday morning was fingerprint dust all over the front door.
Parker said the woman who was freed told deputies why she thought she had been released, but he declined to reveal what she said. Parker said a motive wasn’t clear.
“We do know that these people, who have been taken, are illegal aliens and they had just recently entered the country,” he said.
Neighbors say the family had just moved in about three weeks ago and they know little about them.
From KHOU-TV Staff and Wire Reports
HOUSTON, Texas - Four armed men kicked in the front door of a west Harris County house and kidnapped six illegal immigrants at gunpoint, including a 6-month-old baby, authorities said.
One woman was later freed, but Harris County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. James Parker said the search continued Monday for the other five victims.
Parker described the missing as the 6-month-old with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a white jumper; Her mother and father, who are between 30 and 40 years old; and another couple in their 40s. All are Hispanic.
The woman who was released is giving investigators more details about the crime which began as a home invasion in the 4800 block of Gretna Green.
The owner of the house, who was related to the infant’s parents and another couple who were staying with him, returned from the grocery store Sunday night to find the front door kicked in, Parker said.
The five adults and baby were forced into their van which then sped away.
A neighbor said she saw two of the suspects inside their vehicle as it screeched down the street.
"It's a custom van and you could see the driver and you could see the passenger, but all the other windows were covered up," said Trelis Lee. "... I mean it gives me goosebumps just to talk about it now, 'cause I said now it alerts me that something suspicious was going on if all the windows were covered up in the van."
Lee said it was a white van, possibly a Ford, with a large gold stripe and a smaller blue or black stripe down the side. It had paper license tags.
The only obvious sign of the crime by Monday morning was fingerprint dust all over the front door.
Parker said the woman who was freed told deputies why she thought she had been released, but he declined to reveal what she said. Parker said a motive wasn’t clear.
“We do know that these people, who have been taken, are illegal aliens and they had just recently entered the country,” he said.
Neighbors say the family had just moved in about three weeks ago and they know little about them.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Organizers fight for a 'wet' Dallas
By CHRIS HEINBAUGH / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Citizens for Responsible Beverage Sales are priming the pump to dampen some dry parts of Dallas. The organizers are pushing for a special election to relax restrictions on alcohol sales in North Oak Cliff and West Dallas.
A recent wet-dry survey indicated 52 percent polled would not mind grocery and convenience stores selling beer and wine. Sixty-two percent would let restaurants sell mixed alcoholic beverages.
To get a special election, organizers would have to pull off a successful petition drive. The last time this subject came to a vote was about 1960. To keep the area dry won overwhelmingly.
The Grill 400 in Oak Cliff's Bishop Arts district said they are one of those who would like to see the change. Selling alcohol as a private club means not only asking customers for a driver's license, but also seeing special cards and keeping a membership roster for the state. Headaches they said of doing business in a dry zone.
"It's both an expense, as well as consumes a lot of time that could be used for other things," said owner John Hornsby.
The driving force behind those who would like the change is the new economic development taking root.
"Many want improved restaurants, grocery stores and hotels and they recognize that this is the avenue to get that," said Scott Griggs, of the Citizens for Responsible Beverage Sales.
However, others disagree.
"I don't drink, but the last time I checked, nobody's having any trouble getting access to beer, wine or alcohol," said John Wiley Price, a Dallas commissioner.
Price said loosening restrictions may boost business, but the trade off is not worth it.
"Upside, it may bring a few more taxes," he said. "Downside is it may bring a bit more crime."
But, those who deal with the restrictions said the laws do more harm than good.
"I can just tell you from an owner's perspective, I would prefer not to do a restaurant in a dry area, just because of the hassles involved and the trouble," Hornsby said.
Commissioner Price said he will work to see that the area stays dry.
By CHRIS HEINBAUGH / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Citizens for Responsible Beverage Sales are priming the pump to dampen some dry parts of Dallas. The organizers are pushing for a special election to relax restrictions on alcohol sales in North Oak Cliff and West Dallas.
A recent wet-dry survey indicated 52 percent polled would not mind grocery and convenience stores selling beer and wine. Sixty-two percent would let restaurants sell mixed alcoholic beverages.
To get a special election, organizers would have to pull off a successful petition drive. The last time this subject came to a vote was about 1960. To keep the area dry won overwhelmingly.
The Grill 400 in Oak Cliff's Bishop Arts district said they are one of those who would like to see the change. Selling alcohol as a private club means not only asking customers for a driver's license, but also seeing special cards and keeping a membership roster for the state. Headaches they said of doing business in a dry zone.
"It's both an expense, as well as consumes a lot of time that could be used for other things," said owner John Hornsby.
The driving force behind those who would like the change is the new economic development taking root.
"Many want improved restaurants, grocery stores and hotels and they recognize that this is the avenue to get that," said Scott Griggs, of the Citizens for Responsible Beverage Sales.
However, others disagree.
"I don't drink, but the last time I checked, nobody's having any trouble getting access to beer, wine or alcohol," said John Wiley Price, a Dallas commissioner.
Price said loosening restrictions may boost business, but the trade off is not worth it.
"Upside, it may bring a few more taxes," he said. "Downside is it may bring a bit more crime."
But, those who deal with the restrictions said the laws do more harm than good.
"I can just tell you from an owner's perspective, I would prefer not to do a restaurant in a dry area, just because of the hassles involved and the trouble," Hornsby said.
Commissioner Price said he will work to see that the area stays dry.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Dallas examiner: 'turn-around will pick up'
By JEFF BRADY / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Newer, tighter policies and an increase in staff at the Dallas Medical Examiner Office should speed up the autopsy and DNA process according to Chief Medical Examiner Jeffrey Barnard.
Tiny vials of crime-scene gold such as blood, semen, fingernail samples and more are all processed at the office into
DNA profiles. However, it is a time-consuming process.
"I know a lot of people want the results within the week, but that's just not gonna happen," said Dr. Barnard.
Barnard's office does about 300 autopsies every month and up to 500 final reports await completion at any given time.
In the past, a single case has taken about six months to finish. But now, the process should get a pick up with their new policies on accepting autopsies from other communities and three new doctors on staff.
"Well the turn-around will pick up because now I've got more people to work on the autopsies, freeing up the people who already have cases that are outstanding to get completed," Barnard said.
The amount of work creeps upwards gradually every year. Last year there were 4,800 autopsies, and there are already 4,200 cases so far this year. And half of the that number are not natural deaths and require more advanced analysis to include detailed toxicology.
Still, Dr. Barnard expects the changes to help police, prosecutors and families find resolution at a faster date.
"It is as good as it is going to get," he said. "Once we get all the people in place functioning and get the impact, so I'm hoping the next two months, we'll see the results."
By JEFF BRADY / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Newer, tighter policies and an increase in staff at the Dallas Medical Examiner Office should speed up the autopsy and DNA process according to Chief Medical Examiner Jeffrey Barnard.
Tiny vials of crime-scene gold such as blood, semen, fingernail samples and more are all processed at the office into
DNA profiles. However, it is a time-consuming process.
"I know a lot of people want the results within the week, but that's just not gonna happen," said Dr. Barnard.
Barnard's office does about 300 autopsies every month and up to 500 final reports await completion at any given time.
In the past, a single case has taken about six months to finish. But now, the process should get a pick up with their new policies on accepting autopsies from other communities and three new doctors on staff.
"Well the turn-around will pick up because now I've got more people to work on the autopsies, freeing up the people who already have cases that are outstanding to get completed," Barnard said.
The amount of work creeps upwards gradually every year. Last year there were 4,800 autopsies, and there are already 4,200 cases so far this year. And half of the that number are not natural deaths and require more advanced analysis to include detailed toxicology.
Still, Dr. Barnard expects the changes to help police, prosecutors and families find resolution at a faster date.
"It is as good as it is going to get," he said. "Once we get all the people in place functioning and get the impact, so I'm hoping the next two months, we'll see the results."
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Couple turns yard into soldier memorial
By STEVE STOLER / WFAA ABC 8
LEWISVILLE, Texas - In an attempt to make sure Texas soldiers killed in Iraq are never forgotten, a Lewisville couple turned their front yard into a living memorial.
One-hundred-and-sixty-nine wooden plaques hang from two live oak trees in Phil and Bryson Gappa's front yard on the 1500 block of Oak Creek Drive. Each plaque has a face and a name of men and women who died while serving their country in Iraq.
"When you see their faces, when you read their age, where they are from, how they died, I think it's impossible not to humanize them and I think it's important to do that," Bryson Gappa said.
She said her memorial is not about politics, but pride and gratefulness.
"So much more than a little piece of wood," she said. "It signifies a life when you can see that face."
Gappa said she will keep adding the names of Texas soldiers who are killed in Iraq until the war ends. Only then, will she take the plaques down.
"So tonight when you sleep, or while you sit to eat, think of me and my brothers who are going to sacrifice our lives," Bryson read from one of the plaques.
WFAA ABC 8
So far, 169 plaques hang from the tree of the Lewisville memorial.
By STEVE STOLER / WFAA ABC 8
LEWISVILLE, Texas - In an attempt to make sure Texas soldiers killed in Iraq are never forgotten, a Lewisville couple turned their front yard into a living memorial.
One-hundred-and-sixty-nine wooden plaques hang from two live oak trees in Phil and Bryson Gappa's front yard on the 1500 block of Oak Creek Drive. Each plaque has a face and a name of men and women who died while serving their country in Iraq.
"When you see their faces, when you read their age, where they are from, how they died, I think it's impossible not to humanize them and I think it's important to do that," Bryson Gappa said.
She said her memorial is not about politics, but pride and gratefulness.
"So much more than a little piece of wood," she said. "It signifies a life when you can see that face."
Gappa said she will keep adding the names of Texas soldiers who are killed in Iraq until the war ends. Only then, will she take the plaques down.
"So tonight when you sleep, or while you sit to eat, think of me and my brothers who are going to sacrifice our lives," Bryson read from one of the plaques.

WFAA ABC 8
So far, 169 plaques hang from the tree of the Lewisville memorial.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
NASA hopes it's made a safe Discovery
By ALEXANDRA WITZE / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON, Texas – It took a pound and a half of foam to derail the space shuttle program. It took more than $1 billion and two years to bring it back.
Discovery, one of NASA's three remaining space shuttles, now awaits its final countdown on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If it lifts off Wednesday as planned, with it will go the hopes of America's space agency.
"This is in many ways a competency test for us," said Wayne Hale, deputy manager of the space shuttle program.
But even a clean launch will not guarantee success.
On Jan. 16, 2003, the shuttle Columbia appeared to lift off flawlessly. Mission controllers did not realize that a briefcase-size chunk of foam had broken off the fuel tank and smashed a lethal hole in the shuttle's left wing. Sixteen days later, Columbia disintegrated over Texas as superheated gases penetrated hole in the wing and destroyed the shuttle.
To date, 14 astronauts have died aboard 113 shuttle flights – seven aboard Columbia and seven aboard Challenger in 1986. These next two launches, of Discovery in July and Atlantis soon afterward, will be the benchmark by which NASA passes or fails the test of Columbia.
Many experts say that this return to flight has gone more smoothly than the 2 ½ years that passed between the Challenger disaster and the next shuttle flight in September 1988. Challenger exploded in midair because of NASA's decision to launch on a frigid January morning, at temperatures that caused the failure of protective O-ring seals.
Still, some question whether NASA has done enough to correct problems that led to Columbia's demise. An independent group asked to grade NASA's response to the Columbia investigation board's recommendations ruled that the agency had failed to fully satisfy three of the 15 conditions set for return to flight.
But NASA Administrator Michael Griffin decided June 30, after two days of meetings with shuttle program officials, to go ahead, citing "significant improvements that have greatly reduced the risk of flying the shuttle." He emphasized, however, that "we should never lose sight of the fact that space flight is risky."
Indeed, the shuttle is an experimental machine, with 2 million working parts that could fail in unimagined ways.
To get back to space, the first priority was to correct what went wrong with Columbia.
Engineers have reworked the external tank, the orange-colored capsule that stores 535,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. They focused on the foam insulation that workers at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans spray over the tank to insulate it from the ultra-cold chemicals within and prevent ice from forming on the outside.
The foam that doomed Columbia broke off from the base of a two-legged structure that helps attach the tank to what most people consider to be "the shuttle," which NASA calls the orbiter. Engineers have redesigned that piece of hardware, removing the thick foam ramp and installing heaters to keep the area warm.
Workers at Michoud have revised the way they spray on the foam, making sure it doesn't trap air pockets that could cause pieces of foam to "popcorn" off during launch, said manager Sandy Coleman of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Unlike the briefcase-size chunk that doomed Columbia, the biggest chunks of foam to come off now are expected to be no bigger than a marshmallow.
NASA researchers have taken foam chunks up in jets to fly along the shuttle's re-entry trajectory, spitting out foam divots to see how they tumble in the air. Knowing exactly how the foam hits – and where – makes a big difference in how much damage it could do, said John Muratore, another shuttle manager.
His team has run more than 1 billion computer simulations of debris coming off the external tank and hitting the shuttle. "We've basically been keeping all the supercomputers at NASA busy for the past year and a half," he said.
Wind tunnel testing has helped pin down possible damage depending on the foam's size, shape and trajectory.
With all the early focus on foam, it took a while for engineers to realize that ice could be as big a risk, so they've run tests, simulations and sophisticated computer analyses to try to predict – and eliminate – the risk of ice debris. They've added a second heater, near an exposed portion of liquid oxygen feed line, and they've agreed to postpone the launch if humidity is high and there appears to be too much ice on the tank.
If anything does fall off the tank during launch, NASA will be unlikely to miss it.
"We're expecting to see more debris than ever before," said Mr. Muratore, because mission controllers will be looking so closely for it. NASA has added a host of new cameras, both on the ground and in space, to spot any debris shedding or resulting damage.
A total of 112 cameras will track the shuttle's ascent, manager Christine Boykin said. Radar stations north and south of the launch site will monitor any pieces falling off. Two WB-57 airplanes will photograph the shuttle from an altitude of 60,000 feet.
To make sure that the launch is well-lighted from all perspectives, NASA has literally redefined daylight – to the time when the sun's outermost edge peeks over the horizon, instead of 10 minutes before, which NASA previously considered daylight.
After Discovery gets to space, it will be scrutinized yet again.
On the second flight day, the crew will use a new tool, a 50-foot extension to the robot arm that's equipped with special sensors, to conduct an inspection. A team of three, led by astronaut Andrew Thomas, will use the arm to pick up the extension and run a pre-programmed scan of key areas, including the leading edges of the wings.
On the third day, commander Eileen Collins will halt the shuttle 600 feet beneath its destination, the International Space Station. There she will execute a slow somersault of the DC-9-size shuttle so the station's two-man crew can photograph its tile-coated underbelly and search for signs of damage.
Mission controllers will analyze all the data and the pictures to decide whether there is damage serious enough to alter the mission.
Discovery carries a total of five possible repair methods for the two components of the shuttle's protective heat shield. Though all are unproven and scheduled only to be tested in the payload bay or crew cabin during this flight, they theoretically could be pressed into service in an emergency.
Most critical are the 44 black panels made of reinforced carbon-carbon, or RCC, on the leading edges of the wings. It was one of these panels that foam punctured during Columbia's launch.
"Even a crack, much less a hole, can be catastrophic," Mr. Hale said.
For a crack, astronauts will test slathering on an experimental sealant, working it in with a putty knife. For holes, they will try laying a flexible disk over the gap and bolting it into place inside the wing.
On the shuttle's belly is the rest of the heat shield – 23,000 silica tiles of various shapes. Engineers have developed three ways to fix tile damage.
For small, shallow scrapes, spacewalking astronauts might dab on a protective wash like shoe polish. For deeper holes, they could strap on a backpack filled with 3 gallons of a silicon-based "goo" and squeeze it on with a goo gun. For big holes, they might stuff the holes with an insulating material and bolt a cover over it.
Discovery's astronauts have expressed reservations about whether they would fly back to Earth relying on fixes that remain experimental.
Future shuttle flights will carry similar repair kits, and the hope is that options will improve and kit contents will change over time as engineers develop better methods for patching damage.
If all else fails – if debris damages the shuttle and astronauts can't fix it – then plans call for Discovery's astronauts to hunker down at the space station until a second shuttle can be launched to rescue them.
Seen as a last resort, this "safe haven" concept is called the CSCS option, for Contingency Shuttle Crew Support. In the hallways, however, it's jokingly referred to as "Can Somebody Come Soon?"
If they must, Discovery's seven astronauts will have to share the station with its two regular crew members for as long as 45 days, the time needed to get a second shuttle into space. Mission controllers calculate that there should be enough food, water and oxygen to last nine people for that long.
"Conditions won't be good," station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier said, "but it's better than the alternative."
Staff writer Bruce Nichols in Houston contributed to this report.
NASA
The crew: Front row from left: James Kelly, Wendy Lawrence and Eileen Collins. Back row from left: Stephen Robinson, Andy Thomas, Charles Camarda, and Soichi Noguchi.
By ALEXANDRA WITZE / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON, Texas – It took a pound and a half of foam to derail the space shuttle program. It took more than $1 billion and two years to bring it back.
Discovery, one of NASA's three remaining space shuttles, now awaits its final countdown on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If it lifts off Wednesday as planned, with it will go the hopes of America's space agency.
"This is in many ways a competency test for us," said Wayne Hale, deputy manager of the space shuttle program.
But even a clean launch will not guarantee success.
On Jan. 16, 2003, the shuttle Columbia appeared to lift off flawlessly. Mission controllers did not realize that a briefcase-size chunk of foam had broken off the fuel tank and smashed a lethal hole in the shuttle's left wing. Sixteen days later, Columbia disintegrated over Texas as superheated gases penetrated hole in the wing and destroyed the shuttle.
To date, 14 astronauts have died aboard 113 shuttle flights – seven aboard Columbia and seven aboard Challenger in 1986. These next two launches, of Discovery in July and Atlantis soon afterward, will be the benchmark by which NASA passes or fails the test of Columbia.
Many experts say that this return to flight has gone more smoothly than the 2 ½ years that passed between the Challenger disaster and the next shuttle flight in September 1988. Challenger exploded in midair because of NASA's decision to launch on a frigid January morning, at temperatures that caused the failure of protective O-ring seals.
Still, some question whether NASA has done enough to correct problems that led to Columbia's demise. An independent group asked to grade NASA's response to the Columbia investigation board's recommendations ruled that the agency had failed to fully satisfy three of the 15 conditions set for return to flight.
But NASA Administrator Michael Griffin decided June 30, after two days of meetings with shuttle program officials, to go ahead, citing "significant improvements that have greatly reduced the risk of flying the shuttle." He emphasized, however, that "we should never lose sight of the fact that space flight is risky."
Indeed, the shuttle is an experimental machine, with 2 million working parts that could fail in unimagined ways.
To get back to space, the first priority was to correct what went wrong with Columbia.
Engineers have reworked the external tank, the orange-colored capsule that stores 535,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel. They focused on the foam insulation that workers at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans spray over the tank to insulate it from the ultra-cold chemicals within and prevent ice from forming on the outside.
The foam that doomed Columbia broke off from the base of a two-legged structure that helps attach the tank to what most people consider to be "the shuttle," which NASA calls the orbiter. Engineers have redesigned that piece of hardware, removing the thick foam ramp and installing heaters to keep the area warm.
Workers at Michoud have revised the way they spray on the foam, making sure it doesn't trap air pockets that could cause pieces of foam to "popcorn" off during launch, said manager Sandy Coleman of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Unlike the briefcase-size chunk that doomed Columbia, the biggest chunks of foam to come off now are expected to be no bigger than a marshmallow.
NASA researchers have taken foam chunks up in jets to fly along the shuttle's re-entry trajectory, spitting out foam divots to see how they tumble in the air. Knowing exactly how the foam hits – and where – makes a big difference in how much damage it could do, said John Muratore, another shuttle manager.
His team has run more than 1 billion computer simulations of debris coming off the external tank and hitting the shuttle. "We've basically been keeping all the supercomputers at NASA busy for the past year and a half," he said.
Wind tunnel testing has helped pin down possible damage depending on the foam's size, shape and trajectory.
With all the early focus on foam, it took a while for engineers to realize that ice could be as big a risk, so they've run tests, simulations and sophisticated computer analyses to try to predict – and eliminate – the risk of ice debris. They've added a second heater, near an exposed portion of liquid oxygen feed line, and they've agreed to postpone the launch if humidity is high and there appears to be too much ice on the tank.
If anything does fall off the tank during launch, NASA will be unlikely to miss it.
"We're expecting to see more debris than ever before," said Mr. Muratore, because mission controllers will be looking so closely for it. NASA has added a host of new cameras, both on the ground and in space, to spot any debris shedding or resulting damage.
A total of 112 cameras will track the shuttle's ascent, manager Christine Boykin said. Radar stations north and south of the launch site will monitor any pieces falling off. Two WB-57 airplanes will photograph the shuttle from an altitude of 60,000 feet.
To make sure that the launch is well-lighted from all perspectives, NASA has literally redefined daylight – to the time when the sun's outermost edge peeks over the horizon, instead of 10 minutes before, which NASA previously considered daylight.
After Discovery gets to space, it will be scrutinized yet again.
On the second flight day, the crew will use a new tool, a 50-foot extension to the robot arm that's equipped with special sensors, to conduct an inspection. A team of three, led by astronaut Andrew Thomas, will use the arm to pick up the extension and run a pre-programmed scan of key areas, including the leading edges of the wings.
On the third day, commander Eileen Collins will halt the shuttle 600 feet beneath its destination, the International Space Station. There she will execute a slow somersault of the DC-9-size shuttle so the station's two-man crew can photograph its tile-coated underbelly and search for signs of damage.
Mission controllers will analyze all the data and the pictures to decide whether there is damage serious enough to alter the mission.
Discovery carries a total of five possible repair methods for the two components of the shuttle's protective heat shield. Though all are unproven and scheduled only to be tested in the payload bay or crew cabin during this flight, they theoretically could be pressed into service in an emergency.
Most critical are the 44 black panels made of reinforced carbon-carbon, or RCC, on the leading edges of the wings. It was one of these panels that foam punctured during Columbia's launch.
"Even a crack, much less a hole, can be catastrophic," Mr. Hale said.
For a crack, astronauts will test slathering on an experimental sealant, working it in with a putty knife. For holes, they will try laying a flexible disk over the gap and bolting it into place inside the wing.
On the shuttle's belly is the rest of the heat shield – 23,000 silica tiles of various shapes. Engineers have developed three ways to fix tile damage.
For small, shallow scrapes, spacewalking astronauts might dab on a protective wash like shoe polish. For deeper holes, they could strap on a backpack filled with 3 gallons of a silicon-based "goo" and squeeze it on with a goo gun. For big holes, they might stuff the holes with an insulating material and bolt a cover over it.
Discovery's astronauts have expressed reservations about whether they would fly back to Earth relying on fixes that remain experimental.
Future shuttle flights will carry similar repair kits, and the hope is that options will improve and kit contents will change over time as engineers develop better methods for patching damage.
If all else fails – if debris damages the shuttle and astronauts can't fix it – then plans call for Discovery's astronauts to hunker down at the space station until a second shuttle can be launched to rescue them.
Seen as a last resort, this "safe haven" concept is called the CSCS option, for Contingency Shuttle Crew Support. In the hallways, however, it's jokingly referred to as "Can Somebody Come Soon?"
If they must, Discovery's seven astronauts will have to share the station with its two regular crew members for as long as 45 days, the time needed to get a second shuttle into space. Mission controllers calculate that there should be enough food, water and oxygen to last nine people for that long.
"Conditions won't be good," station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier said, "but it's better than the alternative."
Staff writer Bruce Nichols in Houston contributed to this report.

NASA
The crew: Front row from left: James Kelly, Wendy Lawrence and Eileen Collins. Back row from left: Stephen Robinson, Andy Thomas, Charles Camarda, and Soichi Noguchi.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Consumers fare worst in tax plans
By ROBERT T. GARRETT and TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN, Texas – Consumers, not businesses, will absorb most of the pain if the Legislature can reach a tax-swap deal in the next nine days.
The last substantive effort to broaden taxes paid by businesses died in the Senate on Sunday, as lobbyists and Gov. Rick Perry fought major changes to the state franchise tax.
That leaves just one source of revenue to make up for property tax cuts as a special session on school finance reaches do-or-die time: Texas consumers.
"The inevitable has occurred," said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson. "Who didn't know that a Republican governor and Republican majorities in the Legislature would let business off and put the burden on consumers?"
Under versions of bills passed by both houses, consumers would be hit every time they go to the store, buy a car or boat or light up a smoke.
If the House has its way, there also would be sales tax on bottled water and auto mechanics' labor, plus a $4 surcharge at topless bars. Should the Senate prevail, taxes on beer, wine and spirits would increase 20 percent.
And the corresponding property tax cuts probably won't be as substantial as many Texans hope. Under the Senate plan, for every $100,000 of appraised value, a homeowner would save about $200 this year. That's about $16.70 a month, enough to buy about a Big Mac, fries and Coke each week.
Plus, a sizable minority – more than a third of Texans – don't own property and will see only net tax increases.
Republicans acknowledge they had to scale back their plans but say that the bills still achieve the goal of easing the pressure of school property taxes without gouging business to the point that the state's economy suffers. Backers of the bills reject the business vs. consumers argument, saying that companies ultimately pass their taxes on to customers.
But critics say that under these bills, only businesses and the wealthy come out ahead. They cite nonpartisan findings that previous but similar versions of the two chambers' bills would give the poorest 80 percent of households a net increase in taxes while the richest 20 percent get a cut.
Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, one of the most vocal opponents of the tax shift, points to the impact in his hometown, where an estimated 94 percent of families would pay higher taxes. A primary reason is that middle-class families pay almost 32 percent more in sales taxes than property taxes every year.
"Only the wealthiest Texans will see any tax relief," the senator said. "Nearly everyone else will get a tax hike under either the House or Senate plan."
Scott McCown, who heads the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans, said the tax change is even more burdensome on lower income households.
"This whole drive to lower property taxes is simply raising taxes on most Texans to give a tax break to the wealthiest," he said.
Efforts to expand the state's main business tax – the business franchise tax – failed in both the House and Senate, though both houses voted to close two well-known loopholes that have allowed about 10,000 corporations to avoid paying the tax.
Republican leaders admit they have scaled back earlier hopes of major reductions in school property taxes, too. But, they say, some relief is better than none.
The Senate plan adopted Monday calls for a 20-cent rate cut to $1.30 per $100 valuation this fall, and to $1.25 in the fall of 2006. The House plan has larger decreases, including $1.23 this fall.
"Most Texans would appreciate a 25-cent reduction in their local school property taxes," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. He had proposed a 50-cent cut in the tax rate but had to settle for less when the franchise-tax expansion fell apart Sunday.
That proposal called for a more far-reaching overhaul of business taxes that made partnerships and other business entities pay something – which would be more than they pay now. But Mr. Dewhurst and other Senate leaders lost most of their GOP majority's support and had to back down in the face of conservative activists' complaints that the Legislature was flirting with an income tax.
House leaders acknowledged that finding the right tax mix was just as difficult in their chamber.
"Lowering property taxes is very expensive, and raising other taxes gets very tricky," added Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands.
Mr. Eissler, a House negotiator on a companion school finance bill, said that he and other members believe that billions raised by new taxes should go to property tax reduction instead of to schools, which he thinks have gotten sufficient new funds and waste a lot of the money they do get.
An analysis of the bill as it reached the House floor – done by the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board, a group of lawmakers who track the budget – showed that initially it would impose a net increase of $633 million on individuals and reduce businesses' taxes by $337 million.
That figure was cited by Mr. Dewhurst, who repeatedly warned that the Senate could not stand for shifting a billion dollars in business taxes "onto the backs of hard-working Texas families."
Byron Schlomach, chief economist for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said it "obfuscates the whole issue" to look at who initially pays a new tax.
The tax is eventually passed on to consumers or absorbed by business owners, and when sales or profits are reduced, the owners lay off employees, he said.
"Businesses don't pay taxes. Only people do," said Mr. Schlomach, whose group endorses higher consumption taxes and repeal of the business franchise tax.
Terry Clower, an economist at the University of North Texas, said Republican tax writers in Austin are playing to their base.
"It certainly in large part is meant to assuage the fears of many business leaders," Dr. Clower said of the tax legislation. "One of the things we've used in this state for quite a long time is the advertisement that we are business-friendly, that we have low business taxes."
Staff writer Christy Hoppe contributed to this report.
By ROBERT T. GARRETT and TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN, Texas – Consumers, not businesses, will absorb most of the pain if the Legislature can reach a tax-swap deal in the next nine days.
The last substantive effort to broaden taxes paid by businesses died in the Senate on Sunday, as lobbyists and Gov. Rick Perry fought major changes to the state franchise tax.
That leaves just one source of revenue to make up for property tax cuts as a special session on school finance reaches do-or-die time: Texas consumers.
"The inevitable has occurred," said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson. "Who didn't know that a Republican governor and Republican majorities in the Legislature would let business off and put the burden on consumers?"
Under versions of bills passed by both houses, consumers would be hit every time they go to the store, buy a car or boat or light up a smoke.
If the House has its way, there also would be sales tax on bottled water and auto mechanics' labor, plus a $4 surcharge at topless bars. Should the Senate prevail, taxes on beer, wine and spirits would increase 20 percent.
And the corresponding property tax cuts probably won't be as substantial as many Texans hope. Under the Senate plan, for every $100,000 of appraised value, a homeowner would save about $200 this year. That's about $16.70 a month, enough to buy about a Big Mac, fries and Coke each week.
Plus, a sizable minority – more than a third of Texans – don't own property and will see only net tax increases.
Republicans acknowledge they had to scale back their plans but say that the bills still achieve the goal of easing the pressure of school property taxes without gouging business to the point that the state's economy suffers. Backers of the bills reject the business vs. consumers argument, saying that companies ultimately pass their taxes on to customers.
But critics say that under these bills, only businesses and the wealthy come out ahead. They cite nonpartisan findings that previous but similar versions of the two chambers' bills would give the poorest 80 percent of households a net increase in taxes while the richest 20 percent get a cut.
Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, one of the most vocal opponents of the tax shift, points to the impact in his hometown, where an estimated 94 percent of families would pay higher taxes. A primary reason is that middle-class families pay almost 32 percent more in sales taxes than property taxes every year.
"Only the wealthiest Texans will see any tax relief," the senator said. "Nearly everyone else will get a tax hike under either the House or Senate plan."
Scott McCown, who heads the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans, said the tax change is even more burdensome on lower income households.
"This whole drive to lower property taxes is simply raising taxes on most Texans to give a tax break to the wealthiest," he said.
Efforts to expand the state's main business tax – the business franchise tax – failed in both the House and Senate, though both houses voted to close two well-known loopholes that have allowed about 10,000 corporations to avoid paying the tax.
Republican leaders admit they have scaled back earlier hopes of major reductions in school property taxes, too. But, they say, some relief is better than none.
The Senate plan adopted Monday calls for a 20-cent rate cut to $1.30 per $100 valuation this fall, and to $1.25 in the fall of 2006. The House plan has larger decreases, including $1.23 this fall.
"Most Texans would appreciate a 25-cent reduction in their local school property taxes," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. He had proposed a 50-cent cut in the tax rate but had to settle for less when the franchise-tax expansion fell apart Sunday.
That proposal called for a more far-reaching overhaul of business taxes that made partnerships and other business entities pay something – which would be more than they pay now. But Mr. Dewhurst and other Senate leaders lost most of their GOP majority's support and had to back down in the face of conservative activists' complaints that the Legislature was flirting with an income tax.
House leaders acknowledged that finding the right tax mix was just as difficult in their chamber.
"Lowering property taxes is very expensive, and raising other taxes gets very tricky," added Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands.
Mr. Eissler, a House negotiator on a companion school finance bill, said that he and other members believe that billions raised by new taxes should go to property tax reduction instead of to schools, which he thinks have gotten sufficient new funds and waste a lot of the money they do get.
An analysis of the bill as it reached the House floor – done by the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board, a group of lawmakers who track the budget – showed that initially it would impose a net increase of $633 million on individuals and reduce businesses' taxes by $337 million.
That figure was cited by Mr. Dewhurst, who repeatedly warned that the Senate could not stand for shifting a billion dollars in business taxes "onto the backs of hard-working Texas families."
Byron Schlomach, chief economist for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said it "obfuscates the whole issue" to look at who initially pays a new tax.
The tax is eventually passed on to consumers or absorbed by business owners, and when sales or profits are reduced, the owners lay off employees, he said.
"Businesses don't pay taxes. Only people do," said Mr. Schlomach, whose group endorses higher consumption taxes and repeal of the business franchise tax.
Terry Clower, an economist at the University of North Texas, said Republican tax writers in Austin are playing to their base.
"It certainly in large part is meant to assuage the fears of many business leaders," Dr. Clower said of the tax legislation. "One of the things we've used in this state for quite a long time is the advertisement that we are business-friendly, that we have low business taxes."
Staff writer Christy Hoppe contributed to this report.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Fort Worth Catholic Bishop Delaney dies
FORT WORTH, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - The leader of the Fort Worth Roman Catholic diocese has died at age 70.
Bishop Joseph Delaney was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but had said the cancer was in remission.
The Rev. Robert Wilson, chancellor of the diocese, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for its Tuesday online editions that Delaney had hoped to get his strength back.
"He was never able to get back out to the parishes," Wilson said. "He was good to his people, good to his priests, good to his staff."
Delaney's housekeeper discovered his body Tuesday morning, Wilson said.
Monsignor Kevin Vann, named in May by the Vatican as co-adjutor bishop to succeed Delaney upon his death or retirement, had been scheduled to be installed Wednesday. The ordination will be held as planned, but Vann will now be ordained as bishop instead of co-adjutor bishop, said Wilson.
Delaney, the second bishop of the Fort Worth Diocese, was ordained in 1981.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Those in North Central Texas, Watch WFAA.com and News 8 at 5:00PM CDT for more on this developing story.
FORT WORTH, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - The leader of the Fort Worth Roman Catholic diocese has died at age 70.
Bishop Joseph Delaney was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but had said the cancer was in remission.
The Rev. Robert Wilson, chancellor of the diocese, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for its Tuesday online editions that Delaney had hoped to get his strength back.
"He was never able to get back out to the parishes," Wilson said. "He was good to his people, good to his priests, good to his staff."
Delaney's housekeeper discovered his body Tuesday morning, Wilson said.
Monsignor Kevin Vann, named in May by the Vatican as co-adjutor bishop to succeed Delaney upon his death or retirement, had been scheduled to be installed Wednesday. The ordination will be held as planned, but Vann will now be ordained as bishop instead of co-adjutor bishop, said Wilson.
Delaney, the second bishop of the Fort Worth Diocese, was ordained in 1981.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Those in North Central Texas, Watch WFAA.com and News 8 at 5:00PM CDT for more on this developing story.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Man killed in 3-truck wreck on Route 114
GRAPEVINE, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/WFAA.com) - One person died this morning when an 18-wheeler collided with two other trucks along Highway 114 in Grapevine.
The accident happened around 8:30 a.m. on the 114 service road near Main Street, just west of D/FW Airport.
Grapevine police said two rock-haulers were parked along the shoulder when the accident occurred. The front truck's driver was standing on the side rails of the other truck and was struck and killed by the 18-wheeler.
The accident sparked a fire and a leak; Grapevine and Irving fire crews were on scene putting out the blaze. Hazardous materials crews were also called to the scene to clean up substances that were leaking into the drainage system.
The driver of the 18-wheeler told police his load shifted when he hit a stretch of uneven road surface, and caused him to veer into the parked trucks.
WFAA ABC 8
The accident led to a large fire along 114 in Grapevine.
Those in North Central Texas, Watch WFAA.com and News 8 Midday for updates on this developing story.
GRAPEVINE, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/WFAA.com) - One person died this morning when an 18-wheeler collided with two other trucks along Highway 114 in Grapevine.
The accident happened around 8:30 a.m. on the 114 service road near Main Street, just west of D/FW Airport.
Grapevine police said two rock-haulers were parked along the shoulder when the accident occurred. The front truck's driver was standing on the side rails of the other truck and was struck and killed by the 18-wheeler.
The accident sparked a fire and a leak; Grapevine and Irving fire crews were on scene putting out the blaze. Hazardous materials crews were also called to the scene to clean up substances that were leaking into the drainage system.
The driver of the 18-wheeler told police his load shifted when he hit a stretch of uneven road surface, and caused him to veer into the parked trucks.

WFAA ABC 8
The accident led to a large fire along 114 in Grapevine.
Those in North Central Texas, Watch WFAA.com and News 8 Midday for updates on this developing story.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Gas price jump means more drive-offs
By KAREN OSTERGREN / DallasNews.com
FRISCO, Texas - It’s not just drivers who are suffering from the increasingly high gas prices. Gas station owners report that they are dealing with a lot more thieves.
“Since prices started going up, we’ve had lots of drive-offs. It’s been up for so long now, it’s started mellowing out again,” said Sharla Nowels, who owns a Texaco in Frisco.
Nowels said she is wary of allowing customers to use the post-pay option, meaning they hand over cash after pumping, which is how most people steal gas. She said she usually sizes up the driver before allowing it.
“We’ll look out the window. If it’s someone we know, we’ll turn on the pump. We mostly do prepay, though,” she said.
Nowels’ situation is not unique. James Troy, who manages a RaceTrac in Plano, estimates that he recently lost about $300 worth of gas in three days.
“The higher prices go, the more drive-offs we see,” said Scott Fisher, a vice president for the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.
The last poll taken by the TPCA was in 1999, when Texas gas stations lost an estimated $30 million to gas theft. Although he could not provide specifics, Fisher said, the number keeps going up.
Most gas theft cases are class C misdemeanors for theft under $50. A first offense could result in a maximum $500 fine. Second-time offenders can lose their driver’s license. However, since the policy was instituted in 2001, no licenses have been revoked, Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said.
Catching gas thieves is difficult, partly because they can flee so quickly, said Sgt. Don Peritz, spokesman for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.
“It’s pretty routine to get gas thefts right on the highway, because it’s an easy in, easy out and you’re gone,” he said. “It’s dependent on witnesses.”
The absence of witnesses is one of the main reasons why more people aren’t charged for stealing gas, Dallas police Sr. Cpl. Max Geron said.
“We do provide a form that merchants can fill out providing us with information, but a lot of times we don’t have enough information to track down the person,” he said. “We do what we can on that.”
QuikTrip convenience stores came up with a way of deterring gas theft, called the Pump Start card. Customers who prefer to pay after filling up can sign up for a card at participating QuikTrip stores. The card, linked to the customer’s driver’s license, will activate the pump each time he or she needs to get gas.
“It’s not a credit card; it has no value,” QuikTrip spokesman Mike Thornbrugh said. “We can automatically deactivate the card if someone should choose not to pay, and we have the luxury of turning that person’s driver’s license number over to the police.”
More than 400,000 Pump Start cards have been issued nationwide, and the company plans to expand the number of locations where the card is available. Of 34 gas stations owned by QuikTrip in North Texas, nine, mostly in Arlington, use the Pump Start card.
“We know it’s working because the thefts are going away. Law enforcement absolutely loves it,” Thornbrugh said. “And for our customer, nothing has really changed in the way we do business.”
Canadian-based http://www.gastheft.com aims to catch gas thieves and protect station owners from losses by keeping a license plate database of known gas criminals. Station owners can contact the site for access to the database.
Still, for many station owners, the best solution to gas theft remains prepayment.
“If you always require prepayment, I don’t see how you could have a problem,” Cpl. Geron said.
JASON KINDIG / Special to Dallas Morning News
Sharla Nowels, owner of a Texaco in Frisco, says drive-offs have increased along with gas prices.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also Online:
Find the best gas price: Search by zip code
By KAREN OSTERGREN / DallasNews.com
FRISCO, Texas - It’s not just drivers who are suffering from the increasingly high gas prices. Gas station owners report that they are dealing with a lot more thieves.
“Since prices started going up, we’ve had lots of drive-offs. It’s been up for so long now, it’s started mellowing out again,” said Sharla Nowels, who owns a Texaco in Frisco.
Nowels said she is wary of allowing customers to use the post-pay option, meaning they hand over cash after pumping, which is how most people steal gas. She said she usually sizes up the driver before allowing it.
“We’ll look out the window. If it’s someone we know, we’ll turn on the pump. We mostly do prepay, though,” she said.
Nowels’ situation is not unique. James Troy, who manages a RaceTrac in Plano, estimates that he recently lost about $300 worth of gas in three days.
“The higher prices go, the more drive-offs we see,” said Scott Fisher, a vice president for the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.
The last poll taken by the TPCA was in 1999, when Texas gas stations lost an estimated $30 million to gas theft. Although he could not provide specifics, Fisher said, the number keeps going up.
Most gas theft cases are class C misdemeanors for theft under $50. A first offense could result in a maximum $500 fine. Second-time offenders can lose their driver’s license. However, since the policy was instituted in 2001, no licenses have been revoked, Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said.
Catching gas thieves is difficult, partly because they can flee so quickly, said Sgt. Don Peritz, spokesman for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.
“It’s pretty routine to get gas thefts right on the highway, because it’s an easy in, easy out and you’re gone,” he said. “It’s dependent on witnesses.”
The absence of witnesses is one of the main reasons why more people aren’t charged for stealing gas, Dallas police Sr. Cpl. Max Geron said.
“We do provide a form that merchants can fill out providing us with information, but a lot of times we don’t have enough information to track down the person,” he said. “We do what we can on that.”
QuikTrip convenience stores came up with a way of deterring gas theft, called the Pump Start card. Customers who prefer to pay after filling up can sign up for a card at participating QuikTrip stores. The card, linked to the customer’s driver’s license, will activate the pump each time he or she needs to get gas.
“It’s not a credit card; it has no value,” QuikTrip spokesman Mike Thornbrugh said. “We can automatically deactivate the card if someone should choose not to pay, and we have the luxury of turning that person’s driver’s license number over to the police.”
More than 400,000 Pump Start cards have been issued nationwide, and the company plans to expand the number of locations where the card is available. Of 34 gas stations owned by QuikTrip in North Texas, nine, mostly in Arlington, use the Pump Start card.
“We know it’s working because the thefts are going away. Law enforcement absolutely loves it,” Thornbrugh said. “And for our customer, nothing has really changed in the way we do business.”
Canadian-based http://www.gastheft.com aims to catch gas thieves and protect station owners from losses by keeping a license plate database of known gas criminals. Station owners can contact the site for access to the database.
Still, for many station owners, the best solution to gas theft remains prepayment.
“If you always require prepayment, I don’t see how you could have a problem,” Cpl. Geron said.

JASON KINDIG / Special to Dallas Morning News
Sharla Nowels, owner of a Texaco in Frisco, says drive-offs have increased along with gas prices.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also Online:
Find the best gas price: Search by zip code
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Teenager charged in baby's death
By REBECCA LOPEZ / WFAA ABC 8
LEWISVILLE, Texas - Lewisville police are questioning a 16-year-old Tuesday in connection with the beating death of a two-year-old girl. The child was flown to Children's Medical Center in Dallas Monday night where she died.
The teenage boy is being held at Denton County's Detention Center and was charged with felony injury to a child. The teenager was not related to the little girl but lived in the same home with his guardian.
Neighbors said he used to baby-sit the child and were shocked by the incidence.
"He's been over a couple of times and I am horrified this happened," said neighbor Jill Summers.
By REBECCA LOPEZ / WFAA ABC 8
LEWISVILLE, Texas - Lewisville police are questioning a 16-year-old Tuesday in connection with the beating death of a two-year-old girl. The child was flown to Children's Medical Center in Dallas Monday night where she died.
The teenage boy is being held at Denton County's Detention Center and was charged with felony injury to a child. The teenager was not related to the little girl but lived in the same home with his guardian.
Neighbors said he used to baby-sit the child and were shocked by the incidence.
"He's been over a couple of times and I am horrified this happened," said neighbor Jill Summers.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Drivers swerve to avoid corpse
By HOLLY YAN / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - From afar, Mary Ellen Douglas thought she saw a large white parcel lying in the fast lane where U.S. Highway 175 and Interstate 45 merge.
"I thought it was a package that had fallen from a truck," said Ms. Douglas, who was driving to work Tuesday.
But then she saw the feet. And then the gurney. It was a corpse, wrapped in a white sheet and strapped to a stretcher that had toppled over in the left lane.
The body fell out of a pickup with a covered camper that was en route to a Shreveport funeral home. Authorities identified the body as that of Albert Haynes of Shreveport, La., who had died Monday at a Mesquite hospital, apparently of natural causes.
"The driver of the truck was not aware that he had lost the body," said Dallas police Lt. Rick Andrews of the Southeast Patrol Division. "He saw the open door. He stopped and looked. He turned around, went back and retraced his steps and found the body."
Noon-hour drivers swerved into the right lanes to avoid the corpse and gurney.
Officials said Mr. Haynes' body was being picked up at the Dallas County medical examiner's office and transported to a Shreveport funeral home, where Mr. Haynes' mother lives.
The driver of the pickup could not be reached for comment. Dallas police Senior Cpl. Max Geron said no charges are expected to be filed.
Ms. Douglas said the incident "haunted" her hours later.
"I didn't think it was possible for that to happen," Ms. Douglas said. "I wanted to get out of there. It was too freaky for me."
Staff writers Jason Trahan and Tanya Eiserer contributed to this report.
By HOLLY YAN / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - From afar, Mary Ellen Douglas thought she saw a large white parcel lying in the fast lane where U.S. Highway 175 and Interstate 45 merge.
"I thought it was a package that had fallen from a truck," said Ms. Douglas, who was driving to work Tuesday.
But then she saw the feet. And then the gurney. It was a corpse, wrapped in a white sheet and strapped to a stretcher that had toppled over in the left lane.
The body fell out of a pickup with a covered camper that was en route to a Shreveport funeral home. Authorities identified the body as that of Albert Haynes of Shreveport, La., who had died Monday at a Mesquite hospital, apparently of natural causes.
"The driver of the truck was not aware that he had lost the body," said Dallas police Lt. Rick Andrews of the Southeast Patrol Division. "He saw the open door. He stopped and looked. He turned around, went back and retraced his steps and found the body."
Noon-hour drivers swerved into the right lanes to avoid the corpse and gurney.
Officials said Mr. Haynes' body was being picked up at the Dallas County medical examiner's office and transported to a Shreveport funeral home, where Mr. Haynes' mother lives.
The driver of the pickup could not be reached for comment. Dallas police Senior Cpl. Max Geron said no charges are expected to be filed.
Ms. Douglas said the incident "haunted" her hours later.
"I didn't think it was possible for that to happen," Ms. Douglas said. "I wanted to get out of there. It was too freaky for me."
Staff writers Jason Trahan and Tanya Eiserer contributed to this report.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Police arrest two in vehicle break-ins
By BRAD WATSON / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Two people are in jail Tuesday after police said they broke into nearly two dozen vehicles in the Lakewood section of Dallas east of downtown, near White Rock Lake.
Police received calls from residents who parked their vehicles on streets and driveways in neighborhoods along Pasadena Avenue and Lakewood Boulevard.
Becky Jones found her car with the driver side window and visor mirror broken and her support the troops magnet taken.
"It's wrong," Jones said. "You just don't do that to other people's property. It's just wrong."
Acting on descriptions supplied by residents, police later caught 21-year-old Avon Uvina of Dallas and charged him and a 16-year-old with burglary of motor vehicles. Police tied them to at least 20 break-ins.
Investigators are also looking at whether the two are connected to the theft of Jeanette Williams' car early Monday.
"It's very scary," Williams said. "It's also a major disruption to a person's life when they don't have their car."
Car burglaries went up by one-third in Dallas over the past 10 years.
Although the Texas House passed a bill upgrading the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony with prison time, it died in the Senate because of the increased cost of holding more prisoners.
"That is disheartening, because they need to be more responsible for what they do and how they damage other people's property," Jones said.
Police said Uvina and the teenager told them they were burglarizing cars for drug money.
By BRAD WATSON / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - Two people are in jail Tuesday after police said they broke into nearly two dozen vehicles in the Lakewood section of Dallas east of downtown, near White Rock Lake.
Police received calls from residents who parked their vehicles on streets and driveways in neighborhoods along Pasadena Avenue and Lakewood Boulevard.
Becky Jones found her car with the driver side window and visor mirror broken and her support the troops magnet taken.
"It's wrong," Jones said. "You just don't do that to other people's property. It's just wrong."
Acting on descriptions supplied by residents, police later caught 21-year-old Avon Uvina of Dallas and charged him and a 16-year-old with burglary of motor vehicles. Police tied them to at least 20 break-ins.
Investigators are also looking at whether the two are connected to the theft of Jeanette Williams' car early Monday.
"It's very scary," Williams said. "It's also a major disruption to a person's life when they don't have their car."
Car burglaries went up by one-third in Dallas over the past 10 years.
Although the Texas House passed a bill upgrading the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony with prison time, it died in the Senate because of the increased cost of holding more prisoners.
"That is disheartening, because they need to be more responsible for what they do and how they damage other people's property," Jones said.
Police said Uvina and the teenager told them they were burglarizing cars for drug money.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
CRIME ALERT: Woman pulled over by fake officer
By JIM DOUGLAS / WFAA ABC 8
ARLINGTON, Texas - A woman said a man impersonating a police officer tried to pull her out of the window of her car Monday on I-20 near Green Oaks in south Arlington. She was pulled over by what she believed was an unmarked police car because she said it had a flashing blue strobe light on its hood.
However, once she pulled to the side of the road, she said the man who looked like an officer began to act strangely.
"[He] immediately told the woman to get out of her vehicle and when she questioned him, he reached in and tried to pull her from the vehicle." said Christy Gilfour, an Arlington police spokeswoman.
She fought back and said she believes she hurt the man.
"This person was definitely impersonating a police officer," Gilfour said.
The woman said he had a dark blue uniform, but without the shoulder patches worn by real officers. She also said it appeared he was armed.
"[Armed with] what appeared to be a gun belt and possibly a gun," Gilfour said. "Even a police hat with some sort of insignia."
However, real officers wear nametags and carry photo identification. Also, Arlington's white crown vics are all clearly marked with multi-colored light bars instead of a single blue strobe light.
The woman described the fake officer as a white male with a deep tan. She guessed his age to be around 45 to 50- years-old, his height about 6 feet and his weight 220 lbs. She also said he had an anchor tattooed on his forearm, wore a prominent black goatee and wore rectangular shaped, metal-framed eyeglasses.
By JIM DOUGLAS / WFAA ABC 8
ARLINGTON, Texas - A woman said a man impersonating a police officer tried to pull her out of the window of her car Monday on I-20 near Green Oaks in south Arlington. She was pulled over by what she believed was an unmarked police car because she said it had a flashing blue strobe light on its hood.
However, once she pulled to the side of the road, she said the man who looked like an officer began to act strangely.
"[He] immediately told the woman to get out of her vehicle and when she questioned him, he reached in and tried to pull her from the vehicle." said Christy Gilfour, an Arlington police spokeswoman.
She fought back and said she believes she hurt the man.
"This person was definitely impersonating a police officer," Gilfour said.
The woman said he had a dark blue uniform, but without the shoulder patches worn by real officers. She also said it appeared he was armed.
"[Armed with] what appeared to be a gun belt and possibly a gun," Gilfour said. "Even a police hat with some sort of insignia."
However, real officers wear nametags and carry photo identification. Also, Arlington's white crown vics are all clearly marked with multi-colored light bars instead of a single blue strobe light.
The woman described the fake officer as a white male with a deep tan. She guessed his age to be around 45 to 50- years-old, his height about 6 feet and his weight 220 lbs. She also said he had an anchor tattooed on his forearm, wore a prominent black goatee and wore rectangular shaped, metal-framed eyeglasses.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Water emergency in Collin County
By STEVE STOLER / WFAA ABC 8
COLLIN COUNTY, Texas - Thousands of residents and businesses in Collin County are facing a temporary water crisis while repairs are made to a critical pipeline.
The cities of McKinney and Allen issued emergency appeals to customers to immediately cease all non-essential water use until the repairs can be made.
Residents were urged to shut down sprinklers during the emergency.
Officials said it would take at least 24 hours to fix the broken main at the North Texas Municipal Water District plant in Wylie. The facility, which supplies water to all of Collin County, was not expected to resume water flow at any level until noon Wednesday.
The McKinney City Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The city is operating under a "critical emergency" condition of its drought contingency plan, which prohibits all use of the public water supply—except in emergency cases—until further notice.
Frisco Mayor Pro Tem Maher Maso issued a statement Wednesday morning saying the city's stored water supply would run out within about eight hours.
By STEVE STOLER / WFAA ABC 8
COLLIN COUNTY, Texas - Thousands of residents and businesses in Collin County are facing a temporary water crisis while repairs are made to a critical pipeline.
The cities of McKinney and Allen issued emergency appeals to customers to immediately cease all non-essential water use until the repairs can be made.
Residents were urged to shut down sprinklers during the emergency.
Officials said it would take at least 24 hours to fix the broken main at the North Texas Municipal Water District plant in Wylie. The facility, which supplies water to all of Collin County, was not expected to resume water flow at any level until noon Wednesday.
The McKinney City Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The city is operating under a "critical emergency" condition of its drought contingency plan, which prohibits all use of the public water supply—except in emergency cases—until further notice.
Frisco Mayor Pro Tem Maher Maso issued a statement Wednesday morning saying the city's stored water supply would run out within about eight hours.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Texans are cutting the cord
Wireless phone subscribers now outnumber land lines
By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News
Three years ago, Gloria Shaffner bought her first cellphone. A year later, she gave up her traditional telephone line for good.
The fact that the 39-year-old Dallas accountant no longer has a land line initially shocks many people, she said.
"But why should I pay $40 a month for something that I don't use?" she said Tuesday.
It's a question that a lot of cellphone users are asking these days.
For the first time, wireless subscribers outnumber traditional telephone lines in Texas and nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission says.
"This was the day of reckoning we were all waiting for," Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu analyst Phil Asmundson said.
It's been a steady increase since Southwestern Bell and other providers began offering the first cellular service in Texas nearly 21 years ago. As recently as Dec. 31, 1999, the number of Texas local phone lines still far exceeded wireless, 13.2 million to 5.8 million.
But wireless surpassed wired in the second half of 2004, both in Texas and the U.S. In Texas, wireless users reached 13.1 million, while land lines dropped to 12.1 million. Nationally, wireless jumped ahead to 181.1 million users, compared with 177.9 million land lines.
"Wireless is so popular because it lets people communicate on their terms," said Steve Largent, president and chief executive officer of CTIA-The Wireless Association, the trade group that represents the cellular industry.
More for the money?
"And it's not just about talking anymore. You can browse the Web, take pictures and video, download music, play games or conduct business. Wireless can satisfy a lot of different communication needs and desires, and that's extremely popular to millions of consumers," he said.
Mr. Asmundson can cite his own family as an indication of the richness of today's telecommunications, and the growth of cellphone users compared with land lines. His home has three telephone lines for voice, fax and his office, but the family has six cellphones.
Advances in technology enable land lines to do more with less. While many families may have had two phone lines – one for calls, one for the dialup Internet service – DSL service can put both services on the same line. One phone line can provide multiple voice-mail boxes.
Mr. Asmundson said a bigger factor is that young people now entering the workforce, a group called the "millennials," are very receptive to wireless use.
Next generation
"It's really a group of individuals, the next generation, that has grown entirely in a wireless world. They don't understand and don't really appreciate or value the difference that still exists today in quality between a land line ... and wireless," said Mr. Asmundson, national managing partner of Deloitte's U.S. technology, media and telecommunications industry practice.
Traditional phone lines still offer greater speed, better voice quality and more reliability than wireless phones. But that's becoming less important to young users, he said.
"They are not as fazed as maybe you and I are by a dropped call or some static on the line. That's something they've come to live with and aren't annoyed by," he said.
The question is "not when wireless will become equivalent to wired, but when will wireless be good enough for the average consumer," Mr. Asmundson said. "That inflection point seems to have occurred, particularly in the light of the fact there are more wireless connections than wireline connections. And that gap is going to grow."
John Grantham, 24, gets his voice calls over the Internet or on his cellphone now. He hasn't had a traditional phone since he moved from Florida last year to began law school in Houston.
"People think it's less necessary now," Mr. Grantham said. "Everybody my age has a cellphone, and they use it mainly."
Sandy de Vries, 45, a hand physical therapist at a Dallas hospital, hasn't had a traditional telephone line for about six years. One day, she realized she was paying about $75 to $80 a month for a home phone, the same as she was paying for cellular service. She gave up the land line.
"It's made to me more available to people," she said. "They can get me anywhere. It's also nice that I don't have sales people calling me at night when I get home."
During the same period, her cellular service has gotten cheaper, to about two-thirds of its monthly fees six years ago.
Hanging it up
For users like Mr. Grantham, the decision to go wireless only came when they moved; they never added a home phone. That was also the case for Vikas Ahuja, a 28-year-old management consultant who moved to Dallas last year after he finished graduate business school.
"I just didn't set up a land line," Mr. Ahuja said. "I'm always on the go, and prices have dropped so much for cellphone communications. Nights are free, weekends are free, and during the day you don't talk that much."
His phone uses the GSM standard, which means he can use it in South America, Africa and Europe, an attractive feature since he has family and friends in France and elsewhere in Europe.
And his cellphone does things a regular phone can't. He wakes up to the alarm on his cellphone and checks personal and business e-mail before he gets out of bed.
Many people keep their wire connections to dial up to the Internet. That's the case for lawyer Kamlesan Naidoo, whose home phone has been unplugged most of the time since he and his wife moved into their Kessler Park home a year ago.
Instead, they use their cellphones for all voice calls and the phone line only for Internet service. It took him four to five months just to memorize his home number, and "my wife still doesn't know it," he said.
Wireless phone subscribers now outnumber land lines
By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News
Three years ago, Gloria Shaffner bought her first cellphone. A year later, she gave up her traditional telephone line for good.
The fact that the 39-year-old Dallas accountant no longer has a land line initially shocks many people, she said.
"But why should I pay $40 a month for something that I don't use?" she said Tuesday.
It's a question that a lot of cellphone users are asking these days.
For the first time, wireless subscribers outnumber traditional telephone lines in Texas and nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission says.
"This was the day of reckoning we were all waiting for," Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu analyst Phil Asmundson said.
It's been a steady increase since Southwestern Bell and other providers began offering the first cellular service in Texas nearly 21 years ago. As recently as Dec. 31, 1999, the number of Texas local phone lines still far exceeded wireless, 13.2 million to 5.8 million.
But wireless surpassed wired in the second half of 2004, both in Texas and the U.S. In Texas, wireless users reached 13.1 million, while land lines dropped to 12.1 million. Nationally, wireless jumped ahead to 181.1 million users, compared with 177.9 million land lines.
"Wireless is so popular because it lets people communicate on their terms," said Steve Largent, president and chief executive officer of CTIA-The Wireless Association, the trade group that represents the cellular industry.
More for the money?
"And it's not just about talking anymore. You can browse the Web, take pictures and video, download music, play games or conduct business. Wireless can satisfy a lot of different communication needs and desires, and that's extremely popular to millions of consumers," he said.
Mr. Asmundson can cite his own family as an indication of the richness of today's telecommunications, and the growth of cellphone users compared with land lines. His home has three telephone lines for voice, fax and his office, but the family has six cellphones.
Advances in technology enable land lines to do more with less. While many families may have had two phone lines – one for calls, one for the dialup Internet service – DSL service can put both services on the same line. One phone line can provide multiple voice-mail boxes.
Mr. Asmundson said a bigger factor is that young people now entering the workforce, a group called the "millennials," are very receptive to wireless use.
Next generation
"It's really a group of individuals, the next generation, that has grown entirely in a wireless world. They don't understand and don't really appreciate or value the difference that still exists today in quality between a land line ... and wireless," said Mr. Asmundson, national managing partner of Deloitte's U.S. technology, media and telecommunications industry practice.
Traditional phone lines still offer greater speed, better voice quality and more reliability than wireless phones. But that's becoming less important to young users, he said.
"They are not as fazed as maybe you and I are by a dropped call or some static on the line. That's something they've come to live with and aren't annoyed by," he said.
The question is "not when wireless will become equivalent to wired, but when will wireless be good enough for the average consumer," Mr. Asmundson said. "That inflection point seems to have occurred, particularly in the light of the fact there are more wireless connections than wireline connections. And that gap is going to grow."
John Grantham, 24, gets his voice calls over the Internet or on his cellphone now. He hasn't had a traditional phone since he moved from Florida last year to began law school in Houston.
"People think it's less necessary now," Mr. Grantham said. "Everybody my age has a cellphone, and they use it mainly."
Sandy de Vries, 45, a hand physical therapist at a Dallas hospital, hasn't had a traditional telephone line for about six years. One day, she realized she was paying about $75 to $80 a month for a home phone, the same as she was paying for cellular service. She gave up the land line.
"It's made to me more available to people," she said. "They can get me anywhere. It's also nice that I don't have sales people calling me at night when I get home."
During the same period, her cellular service has gotten cheaper, to about two-thirds of its monthly fees six years ago.
Hanging it up
For users like Mr. Grantham, the decision to go wireless only came when they moved; they never added a home phone. That was also the case for Vikas Ahuja, a 28-year-old management consultant who moved to Dallas last year after he finished graduate business school.
"I just didn't set up a land line," Mr. Ahuja said. "I'm always on the go, and prices have dropped so much for cellphone communications. Nights are free, weekends are free, and during the day you don't talk that much."
His phone uses the GSM standard, which means he can use it in South America, Africa and Europe, an attractive feature since he has family and friends in France and elsewhere in Europe.
And his cellphone does things a regular phone can't. He wakes up to the alarm on his cellphone and checks personal and business e-mail before he gets out of bed.
Many people keep their wire connections to dial up to the Internet. That's the case for lawyer Kamlesan Naidoo, whose home phone has been unplugged most of the time since he and his wife moved into their Kessler Park home a year ago.
Instead, they use their cellphones for all voice calls and the phone line only for Internet service. It took him four to five months just to memorize his home number, and "my wife still doesn't know it," he said.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Miller halts tax-credit use
Some say council vote on housing projects needed before ban
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said Tuesday that the city will not consider or accept any more tax credits for low-income, multifamily housing projects until an FBI investigation into corruption at City Hall is complete.
In a letter addressed to the executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Ms. Miller asked state officials to honor Dallas' request for a "moratorium for an unspecified length" on the development projects – some of which appear to be at the center of the federal inquiry.
"I don't know why anybody would want to consider these projects at all for the time being," Ms. Miller said. "There are too many questions about how these are being approved."
Several of Ms. Miller's colleagues applauded her action, saying it sends the right message to the state and to the public. But others – such as council members Maxine Thornton-Reese and Steve Salazar – were caught off guard and argued that the mayor did not have the authority to make such a recommendation without a vote of the full council.
"The mayor is certainly entitled to her opinion, but to me it would make more sense for the council to convene and discuss it," Mr. Salazar said. "I would prefer to look at ... [tax-credit projects] on a case-by-case basis."
'All about timing'
And local developers with tax-credit projects in the pipeline said Tuesday that Ms. Miller's actions might jeopardize their funding and, in the short term, affordable housing in Dallas.
"With tax credits, it's all about timing," said Michelle Raglon, spokeswoman for the Dallas Housing Authority. "There are a lot of low-income families we serve who are going to need housing. If this ends up being a fact, we're definitely concerned."
Tax-credit projects reduce taxes for developers who build rental units for low-income residents.
Federal housing tax credits are distributed to state agencies, which award them to individual developers. The developers sell the credits to investors to raise capital, allowing them to offer affordable rents to low-income tenants. While the developers get federal tax breaks, they are not exempt from local property taxes.
The most competitive of these credits are allocated by priority to the best projects serving the lowest-income families. Others – in the form of tax-exempt bonds – are generally distributed in a lottery system.
Last year, nearly every developer who entered the lottery got a project after leftover bond money from a state residential program was passed along to the multifamily tax-credit fund. Already, 7 percent of the city's multifamily projects have been developed through the tax-credit program.
Ms. Miller has made no secret of her disdain for multifamily tax-credit projects, which she says create crime problems and become blighted eyesores across the city – particularly in Dallas' southern sector. And while she has supported tax-credit projects for senior citizens and rehabilitation projects, she has regularly been the City Council's lone no vote on new multifamily developments.
Last year, she asked the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to stop sending the projects to Dallas. It didn't, Ms. Miller said. And she said Jerry Killingsworth, Dallas' housing director, warned her there could be as many as 15 more multimillion-dollar tax-credit projects up for the city's approval in September.
Now that it's clear the multifamily projects are a focus of the FBI investigation – and that there no longer is a waiting list for senior housing – Ms. Miller said she thinks her colleagues will agree to hold off on approving or considering more.
"Why would we approve any more when we don't know what's going on" with the current projects, Ms. Miller asked. "I say enough is enough."
'Act in good faith'
City Manager Mary Suhm said Tuesday that she approves of Ms. Miller's recommendation. Most council members reached during their summer recess agreed and said they would have voted against approving more tax-credit projects if given the opportunity.
"I understand she's trying to act in good faith," council member Leo Chaney said. "And until the air is cleared, that might not be a bad idea."
"I don't care whose district it's in," council member Mitchell Rasansky said. "I don't think we should move forward until this investigation is over."
But Dr. Thornton-Reese said she was upset that Ms. Miller acted without council approval.
"I think she needed to discuss it with council and not make the decision by herself," Dr. Thornton-Reese said.
As of Tuesday evening, Ms. Miller said she hadn't heard from any council members opposed to her recommendation – which was sent out in a memo Tuesday morning. She said she's willing to listen to anyone with "major heartburn" but still planned to put the letter to the state in the mail immediately.
And if state officials continue to pass along tax credits for local development projects?
"We are not going to process them," Ms. Miller said.
Mark Obeso, assistant director of the city's housing department, said the next round of tax-credit applications should be submitted to the city in September, followed by a state lottery in November. Normally, the City Council would vote to support or deny an application based on how well it fits the needs and character of the community.
What the mayor is recommending – not putting such applications on the council agenda until the FBI investigation is complete – wouldn't have a negative impact on affordable housing in Dallas, Mr. Obeso said.
"At the moment, we've got a lot of housing being developed," he said.
And Ms. Miller said Mr. Killingsworth, the housing director, who is on vacation and could not be reached for comment, made it clear to her that his department was dreading the review of more tax-credit projects in the middle of an FBI investigation.
'Wait and see'
"The whole thing is so tortuous, so painful and now so questionable that I don't want staff to have to go through it," the mayor said. "Now that there's a question about how some of these got approved, I think we need to wait and see."
For years, Dallas didn't have jurisdiction over whether a tax-credit project could be built within the city limits. In 2003, Dallas was given the right to approve or deny new tax-credit projects, said Gordon Anderson, a spokesman for the state housing department.
Mr. Anderson said Tuesday that department officials weren't ready to comment on Ms. Miller's letter. But he said they always try to take "the wishes of local elected officials" into account when making decisions.
"Our board is charged with the responsibility of creating or retaining the state's stock of affordable housing," he said. "All of these issues have to be balanced against one another."
Ms. Raglon said she's not sure whether the Dallas Housing Authority has any projects that will be immediately affected by the mayor's letter. And she said there are still many unknowns, such as "how the council feels about it and how long the investigation is going to be." But she said there's the potential that projects could get stalled or halted without the tax credits.
"We need that aspect of it," she said. "And if we don't have it, we wouldn't be able to finish on time."
Some say council vote on housing projects needed before ban
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said Tuesday that the city will not consider or accept any more tax credits for low-income, multifamily housing projects until an FBI investigation into corruption at City Hall is complete.
In a letter addressed to the executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Ms. Miller asked state officials to honor Dallas' request for a "moratorium for an unspecified length" on the development projects – some of which appear to be at the center of the federal inquiry.
"I don't know why anybody would want to consider these projects at all for the time being," Ms. Miller said. "There are too many questions about how these are being approved."
Several of Ms. Miller's colleagues applauded her action, saying it sends the right message to the state and to the public. But others – such as council members Maxine Thornton-Reese and Steve Salazar – were caught off guard and argued that the mayor did not have the authority to make such a recommendation without a vote of the full council.
"The mayor is certainly entitled to her opinion, but to me it would make more sense for the council to convene and discuss it," Mr. Salazar said. "I would prefer to look at ... [tax-credit projects] on a case-by-case basis."
'All about timing'
And local developers with tax-credit projects in the pipeline said Tuesday that Ms. Miller's actions might jeopardize their funding and, in the short term, affordable housing in Dallas.
"With tax credits, it's all about timing," said Michelle Raglon, spokeswoman for the Dallas Housing Authority. "There are a lot of low-income families we serve who are going to need housing. If this ends up being a fact, we're definitely concerned."
Tax-credit projects reduce taxes for developers who build rental units for low-income residents.
Federal housing tax credits are distributed to state agencies, which award them to individual developers. The developers sell the credits to investors to raise capital, allowing them to offer affordable rents to low-income tenants. While the developers get federal tax breaks, they are not exempt from local property taxes.
The most competitive of these credits are allocated by priority to the best projects serving the lowest-income families. Others – in the form of tax-exempt bonds – are generally distributed in a lottery system.
Last year, nearly every developer who entered the lottery got a project after leftover bond money from a state residential program was passed along to the multifamily tax-credit fund. Already, 7 percent of the city's multifamily projects have been developed through the tax-credit program.
Ms. Miller has made no secret of her disdain for multifamily tax-credit projects, which she says create crime problems and become blighted eyesores across the city – particularly in Dallas' southern sector. And while she has supported tax-credit projects for senior citizens and rehabilitation projects, she has regularly been the City Council's lone no vote on new multifamily developments.
Last year, she asked the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to stop sending the projects to Dallas. It didn't, Ms. Miller said. And she said Jerry Killingsworth, Dallas' housing director, warned her there could be as many as 15 more multimillion-dollar tax-credit projects up for the city's approval in September.
Now that it's clear the multifamily projects are a focus of the FBI investigation – and that there no longer is a waiting list for senior housing – Ms. Miller said she thinks her colleagues will agree to hold off on approving or considering more.
"Why would we approve any more when we don't know what's going on" with the current projects, Ms. Miller asked. "I say enough is enough."
'Act in good faith'
City Manager Mary Suhm said Tuesday that she approves of Ms. Miller's recommendation. Most council members reached during their summer recess agreed and said they would have voted against approving more tax-credit projects if given the opportunity.
"I understand she's trying to act in good faith," council member Leo Chaney said. "And until the air is cleared, that might not be a bad idea."
"I don't care whose district it's in," council member Mitchell Rasansky said. "I don't think we should move forward until this investigation is over."
But Dr. Thornton-Reese said she was upset that Ms. Miller acted without council approval.
"I think she needed to discuss it with council and not make the decision by herself," Dr. Thornton-Reese said.
As of Tuesday evening, Ms. Miller said she hadn't heard from any council members opposed to her recommendation – which was sent out in a memo Tuesday morning. She said she's willing to listen to anyone with "major heartburn" but still planned to put the letter to the state in the mail immediately.
And if state officials continue to pass along tax credits for local development projects?
"We are not going to process them," Ms. Miller said.
Mark Obeso, assistant director of the city's housing department, said the next round of tax-credit applications should be submitted to the city in September, followed by a state lottery in November. Normally, the City Council would vote to support or deny an application based on how well it fits the needs and character of the community.
What the mayor is recommending – not putting such applications on the council agenda until the FBI investigation is complete – wouldn't have a negative impact on affordable housing in Dallas, Mr. Obeso said.
"At the moment, we've got a lot of housing being developed," he said.
And Ms. Miller said Mr. Killingsworth, the housing director, who is on vacation and could not be reached for comment, made it clear to her that his department was dreading the review of more tax-credit projects in the middle of an FBI investigation.
'Wait and see'
"The whole thing is so tortuous, so painful and now so questionable that I don't want staff to have to go through it," the mayor said. "Now that there's a question about how some of these got approved, I think we need to wait and see."
For years, Dallas didn't have jurisdiction over whether a tax-credit project could be built within the city limits. In 2003, Dallas was given the right to approve or deny new tax-credit projects, said Gordon Anderson, a spokesman for the state housing department.
Mr. Anderson said Tuesday that department officials weren't ready to comment on Ms. Miller's letter. But he said they always try to take "the wishes of local elected officials" into account when making decisions.
"Our board is charged with the responsibility of creating or retaining the state's stock of affordable housing," he said. "All of these issues have to be balanced against one another."
Ms. Raglon said she's not sure whether the Dallas Housing Authority has any projects that will be immediately affected by the mayor's letter. And she said there are still many unknowns, such as "how the council feels about it and how long the investigation is going to be." But she said there's the potential that projects could get stalled or halted without the tax credits.
"We need that aspect of it," she said. "And if we don't have it, we wouldn't be able to finish on time."
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
'Malingering' alleged on sheriff's staff
Dallas County: Official notes high percentage out on workers' comp
By JAMES M. O'NEILL / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey fired a warning shot Tuesday at the Sheriff's Department, noting the high percentage of workers' compensation cases among sheriff's staff and asking whether it reflected "a culture of malingering" in the department.
During the last year, workers' compensation payments involving sheriff's staff have totaled $1.8 million, or 68 percent of the county's total – even though the staff only makes up about 30 percent of the county workforce.
And during the same period, sheriff's staff reported 341 injuries on the job, whether or not they resulted in a claim, or 58 percent of the county total.
Mrs. Dickey said that having far more sheriff's employees end up out on workers' compensation than staffers from other county departments adds to the burden in the jail at a time when the county is looking to add employees to address serious problems with the jail's health-care delivery.
The disproportion of cases involving sheriff's employees "makes me wonder if there's a culture of malingering that's not present in the rest of the county," Mrs. Dickey said. "If you have that many people out, it also costs in overtime to fill their slots. The county and taxpayers are being held hostage by this.
"There are so many things we have underfunded, which makes it more disturbing to be paying people to take a vacation," she said.
The county estimates that overtime in the Sheriff's Department will total about $4.1 million this fiscal year. But only some of that is to cover the slots of injured workers.
Deputy Chief Edgar McMillan, who oversees the department's jail operations, said jail employees work in a dangerous setting that involves constant interaction with inmates who are going through drug-addiction withdrawal, are angry about being arrested, may have mental illness or are intoxicated when brought to the jail.
That said, he agreed there were some who take advantage of the system.
"I'd say 90 percent are legitimate injuries, but you've got some who will milk it," he said. "Yes, there are malingerers."
Sgt. Stan Thedford, president of the sheriff employee association, said he understood and shared Mrs. Dickey's concern. But he said that sheriff's employees stand a greater risk of injury given the nature of their jobs.
Mattye Mauldin-Taylor, the county's human resources director, said the county has made significant strides in lowering the number of people on workers' compensation over the years. She noted that when she arrived eight years ago, about 50 county workers a day were out on workers' compensation, compared with only about 20 now.
She said that former Sheriff Jim Bowles, before leaving office, had started to shift from a policy of not bothering those out on workers' compensation to getting them back on light duty to help reduce county costs. Sheriff Lupe Valdez has agreed to a pilot program to bring some workers, including pregnant jail guards, back on light duty, Ms. Mauldin-Taylor said.
The county pays about $3 million a year in workers' compensation, both for employees' medical treatment and the payments they receive for permanent injury.
When someone is determined to have a permanent disability because of a work injury, they receive their full pay while employed and an additional 70 percent of their pay for a number of weeks, based on the severity of the permanent injury.
County officials also say they are hampered by a state law that requires the county to pay the full salary of any injured law enforcement employee through the end of the sheriff's term in office, even if the employee is out of work the entire time. That means someone injured today would be able to stay out of work and still collect full salary for the next 3 1/2 years – when Sheriff Valdez's term is up.
To compensate, the county in November passed a rule that lets managers terminate the employment of anyone who is out of work for more than six months. However, they are still bound by state law to pay the person's salary until the end of the sheriff's term.
The county's six-month termination provision allows it to hire a full-time employee to fill the spot, instead of relying on temporary replacements or overtime.
In December, when Sheriff Bowles' term expired, the county terminated the employment of about 20 employees who had been out of work for long periods.
Dallas County: Official notes high percentage out on workers' comp
By JAMES M. O'NEILL / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey fired a warning shot Tuesday at the Sheriff's Department, noting the high percentage of workers' compensation cases among sheriff's staff and asking whether it reflected "a culture of malingering" in the department.
During the last year, workers' compensation payments involving sheriff's staff have totaled $1.8 million, or 68 percent of the county's total – even though the staff only makes up about 30 percent of the county workforce.
And during the same period, sheriff's staff reported 341 injuries on the job, whether or not they resulted in a claim, or 58 percent of the county total.
Mrs. Dickey said that having far more sheriff's employees end up out on workers' compensation than staffers from other county departments adds to the burden in the jail at a time when the county is looking to add employees to address serious problems with the jail's health-care delivery.
The disproportion of cases involving sheriff's employees "makes me wonder if there's a culture of malingering that's not present in the rest of the county," Mrs. Dickey said. "If you have that many people out, it also costs in overtime to fill their slots. The county and taxpayers are being held hostage by this.
"There are so many things we have underfunded, which makes it more disturbing to be paying people to take a vacation," she said.
The county estimates that overtime in the Sheriff's Department will total about $4.1 million this fiscal year. But only some of that is to cover the slots of injured workers.
Deputy Chief Edgar McMillan, who oversees the department's jail operations, said jail employees work in a dangerous setting that involves constant interaction with inmates who are going through drug-addiction withdrawal, are angry about being arrested, may have mental illness or are intoxicated when brought to the jail.
That said, he agreed there were some who take advantage of the system.
"I'd say 90 percent are legitimate injuries, but you've got some who will milk it," he said. "Yes, there are malingerers."
Sgt. Stan Thedford, president of the sheriff employee association, said he understood and shared Mrs. Dickey's concern. But he said that sheriff's employees stand a greater risk of injury given the nature of their jobs.
Mattye Mauldin-Taylor, the county's human resources director, said the county has made significant strides in lowering the number of people on workers' compensation over the years. She noted that when she arrived eight years ago, about 50 county workers a day were out on workers' compensation, compared with only about 20 now.
She said that former Sheriff Jim Bowles, before leaving office, had started to shift from a policy of not bothering those out on workers' compensation to getting them back on light duty to help reduce county costs. Sheriff Lupe Valdez has agreed to a pilot program to bring some workers, including pregnant jail guards, back on light duty, Ms. Mauldin-Taylor said.
The county pays about $3 million a year in workers' compensation, both for employees' medical treatment and the payments they receive for permanent injury.
When someone is determined to have a permanent disability because of a work injury, they receive their full pay while employed and an additional 70 percent of their pay for a number of weeks, based on the severity of the permanent injury.
County officials also say they are hampered by a state law that requires the county to pay the full salary of any injured law enforcement employee through the end of the sheriff's term in office, even if the employee is out of work the entire time. That means someone injured today would be able to stay out of work and still collect full salary for the next 3 1/2 years – when Sheriff Valdez's term is up.
To compensate, the county in November passed a rule that lets managers terminate the employment of anyone who is out of work for more than six months. However, they are still bound by state law to pay the person's salary until the end of the sheriff's term.
The county's six-month termination provision allows it to hire a full-time employee to fill the spot, instead of relying on temporary replacements or overtime.
In December, when Sheriff Bowles' term expired, the county terminated the employment of about 20 employees who had been out of work for long periods.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Teenage pregnancy rate falls
But state is still 2nd-highest in U.S., study says
HOUSTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) – Texas' teen pregnancy rate has declined over the last decade, but studies show that young people in the state are more likely to have babies than most of their peers in other parts of the country.
One national study said Texas had the second-highest rate, behind Mississippi.
State statistics show the rate dropped 32 percent in Texas between 1996 and 2003.
"I do think we are, for the most part, following a national trend," said Chan McDermott, a coordinator for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "We are just following a little bit behind it, and it will probably take us a little bit longer to reach the same level of achievement that has been reached in other states."
Reasons for the nationwide decline are about evenly split between delays in sexual activity and more contraceptive use, according to research by Dr. John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University in New York City.
"We have made progress," he said, "and a lot of people should be patting themselves on the back. But clearly, there is a lot of work to be done."
Youth advocates say condom use has increased as a result of the HIV/AIDS, and teens have more birth control choices.
More teens are also abstaining from sexual activity.
Chris Markham, a behavioral sciences professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, is working on a study with Houston middle school students. She said about 14 percent of seventh-graders say they have had sex.
"I think we can't be complacent and assume these declines we've seen are going to keep on declining," she said.
But state is still 2nd-highest in U.S., study says
HOUSTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) – Texas' teen pregnancy rate has declined over the last decade, but studies show that young people in the state are more likely to have babies than most of their peers in other parts of the country.
One national study said Texas had the second-highest rate, behind Mississippi.
State statistics show the rate dropped 32 percent in Texas between 1996 and 2003.
"I do think we are, for the most part, following a national trend," said Chan McDermott, a coordinator for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "We are just following a little bit behind it, and it will probably take us a little bit longer to reach the same level of achievement that has been reached in other states."
Reasons for the nationwide decline are about evenly split between delays in sexual activity and more contraceptive use, according to research by Dr. John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University in New York City.
"We have made progress," he said, "and a lot of people should be patting themselves on the back. But clearly, there is a lot of work to be done."
Youth advocates say condom use has increased as a result of the HIV/AIDS, and teens have more birth control choices.
More teens are also abstaining from sexual activity.
Chris Markham, a behavioral sciences professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, is working on a study with Houston middle school students. She said about 14 percent of seventh-graders say they have had sex.
"I think we can't be complacent and assume these declines we've seen are going to keep on declining," she said.
0 likes
- TexasStooge
- Category 5
- Posts: 38127
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:22 pm
- Location: Irving (Dallas County), TX
- Contact:
Water is flowing, but restrictions remain
By DON WALL / WFAA ABC 8
WYLIE, Texas — Thousands of North Texans woke up Thursday wondering whether there would be water flowing from the tap for their morning shower.
Fifteen cities in Collin and Denton counties were placed under emergency water restrictions Wednesday after a 78-inch pipeline burst at the Texas Municipal Water District treatment plant in Wylie that serves an estimated 600,000 residents.
"Our crews were able to make the repairs by about 10 o'clock last night," said David Stephens, a spokesman for the NTMWD. "We were able to begin pumping into the pipeline around midnight."
Stephens said took about three hours to refill and recharge the line. "Then—about 4 o'clock this morning—we began actually pushing water into those ground storage tanks."
The affected areas include Allen, Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Princeton, Little Elm, Lucas, Parker, Prosper and Melissa.
But residents were warned that Stage 4 water use restrictions remained in effect Thursday. The guidelines:
• Prohibit all non-essential water use
• Prohibit the washing of vehicles
• Prohibit golf course watering except for greens and tee boxes
• Prohibit the filling of any swimming pools
• Require commercial users to reduce water usage by 60-70 percent
News 8 found several businesses and residents violating the restrictions by operating sprinklers during the early morning hours on Thursday.
"Citizens and residents and businesses in particular should not be running irrigation systems today," Stephens said. "The tanks are not back to normal levels ... It will take the remainder of today to get those ground storage tanks back up to normal, and probably tomorrow for the cities to recover in their elevated tanks."
Stephens said residents should also refrain from watering on Saturday to give the system a chance to recover.
All Collin County government offices were closed on Thursday as part of the effort conserve water.
WFAA ABC 8
Some Collin County water users ignored restrictions overnight.
By DON WALL / WFAA ABC 8
WYLIE, Texas — Thousands of North Texans woke up Thursday wondering whether there would be water flowing from the tap for their morning shower.
Fifteen cities in Collin and Denton counties were placed under emergency water restrictions Wednesday after a 78-inch pipeline burst at the Texas Municipal Water District treatment plant in Wylie that serves an estimated 600,000 residents.
"Our crews were able to make the repairs by about 10 o'clock last night," said David Stephens, a spokesman for the NTMWD. "We were able to begin pumping into the pipeline around midnight."
Stephens said took about three hours to refill and recharge the line. "Then—about 4 o'clock this morning—we began actually pushing water into those ground storage tanks."
The affected areas include Allen, Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Princeton, Little Elm, Lucas, Parker, Prosper and Melissa.
But residents were warned that Stage 4 water use restrictions remained in effect Thursday. The guidelines:
• Prohibit all non-essential water use
• Prohibit the washing of vehicles
• Prohibit golf course watering except for greens and tee boxes
• Prohibit the filling of any swimming pools
• Require commercial users to reduce water usage by 60-70 percent
News 8 found several businesses and residents violating the restrictions by operating sprinklers during the early morning hours on Thursday.
"Citizens and residents and businesses in particular should not be running irrigation systems today," Stephens said. "The tanks are not back to normal levels ... It will take the remainder of today to get those ground storage tanks back up to normal, and probably tomorrow for the cities to recover in their elevated tanks."
Stephens said residents should also refrain from watering on Saturday to give the system a chance to recover.
All Collin County government offices were closed on Thursday as part of the effort conserve water.

WFAA ABC 8
Some Collin County water users ignored restrictions overnight.
0 likes
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests